Rants and meanderings from a science fiction writer to his future fans, or anyone else who'll listen, for that matter.

Menu

Mr. Hellstrøm is an average drunken profligate, cynical bastard (read: disappointed romantic), and all-round lazy crazy son-of-a-bitch out to become a cult in his own right, shamelessly promoting himself (haha, good luck with that old boy) and the book before it is even done. Nonetheless, he does have an interesting slant on things now and again, as I can testify. After all, no one knows him better than I do.

Tag Archives for honest

Give me an honest hypocrite any day. At least then I’ll know what I am dealing with. People who know they are hypocrites, who are up front about it, at least with themselves. They live with a sardonic grin on their faces. But please, oh please, save me from the hypocrites who truly believe in their own bullshit. Those are the dangerous ones.
It’s the little biddy telling me that we have to do something for the poor while she lives on the inheritance of her predecessors, an inheritance pressed out of people who worked sixteen hours a day for pennies. She pays her dues to various charities, and she feels very good about that. It’s the young urban professional telling me we really need to finally do something about the situation in Africa, though the company he works for is robbing resources from that very continent, and killing people in the process.
Dangerous. In such cases, the word honesty takes on a whole new meaning. The problem is that truth is on many levels, and people who believe in what they say are very convincing, though what they say may have nothing whatsoever to do with what they do. That yuppy wouldn’t give a cent to the corner bum. Nor would the biddy, most likely, for she has already paid to help poor people, hasn’t she now?
Either you live in the world as it is and you’re glad you’re not in the bottom half, and you know you’re glad and you look at the bum on the corner and say, tough tits; or you don’t think that’s right and you actually do something about it. I won’t tell you which direction I go with this, because that is not the point. I will say that either direction is okay with me, as long as you are honest with yourself.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

So you’re in love and she isn’t anymore, and you lie alone in bed, trying not to think. She’s the best thing you ever had. Even as the thought occurs to you, you know how cliché that sounds… but there it is. She is creative, intelligent, passionate, capable of deep feeling, and honest. She doesn’t want to hurt you, she just can’t love you anymore, and is being honest. But you can’t help being hurt. You feel like a dog that’s just had it’s leg torn off, and stands there, utterly bewildered, blinking stupidly at the stump. Not yet even remotely comprehending how, or why. In a state of shock.
Unfortunately, you are not a dog. If you were, you might think: fucking bitch… she smells so good… oh well. You would go on with your life without worrying. But you are cursed with the ability to think, being a big-brained ape with nothing better to do. So you think of the promise you made. You never actually said „I promise“, but the promise was there, in your heart, clear and sweet like the air after a thunderstorm. She knew that, she saw it in your eyes, she felt it in your hands. She heard it and read it in the beautiful words you unfolded before her in a calm stream of love and certainty. That’s why she waited so long. Longer than she actually could… she counted on you, and you failed her. Circumstances prevented you, you say to yourself, and it’s true enough, but nevertheless you wonder what you could have done, what desperate measures might have led to salvation in spite of it all. You were already on the verge of doing something insane when she pulled the ripcord. You felt in your bones that things were getting ticklish. Circumstances! The word threatens to split your head.
It’s bitter. So damned bitter. You’d rather kill yourself than taste that taste; but it would be tantamount to cowardice not to face the facts. She’d pity you then, and hate you for betraying her belief that you are a good person, strong, a man worth loving… no matter whether she loves you anymore or not. That would be worse than anything you can think of, for even now you still want to please her. It is better, in that case, to drink some more wine. But even drink doesn’t help in the least, much to your chagrin. You drink more, and more, and even then… what’s the point in drinking, when it doesn’t stop the pain?
So, what recourse do you have? Face up to the horrid truth: you’ve lost her. The one that got away, like some damned fisherman’s tale.
She never did you wrong. If she had, you could at least indulge your mind in thoughts of morbid revenge, or in the belief that she isn’t good enough for you. Not even this avenue of emotional escape is open to you, and you begin to wonder if you can ever even stop loving her. You’d cry if you had any tears left. You contemplate the stump. Blinking. Stupid.
Listening to Don’t Bother Me from the Beatles.

Like this:

One of the basic inconsistencies of democracy is that only people who want power (or money, as a means to power) will become candidates. There are exceptions. There are people in politics who are truly altruistic. But they are so few and far between that one can practically discount them in the statistical sense. Many people who’s goals seem altruistic, or at least „good“, are still power-people. They want to rule you, and God help you if their goals aren’t congruent with yours.
If you must be ruled, it is better not to be ruled by people who want power. A person who wants power is simply interested in exercising and furthering that power, not in serving the people, which is what elected political officials should supposedly be doing in a democracy.
Like all big political systems run by human society, democracies tend to become corrupt over time. Because humans are the crazy little aggressive curious apes that they are, they will exploit any system for their own individual benefit. And how do you expect a system they created themselves to resist that? I don’t see any way out of this contradiction. It’s a basic and inherent flaw in all human political endeavors.
It makes me think we really shouldn’t be living together in such large numbers, since there seems to be no really effective way we can govern the human need for acing the other fellow out, to control the human penchant for outwitting the immediate environment. Since we no longer live in a natural environment, since we have made/become our own separate environment to some extent, in which often the only opponents are other humans, this survival skill is exercised on other humans. Not exactly conducive to systems that truly have the interests of society as a whole in mind, or to protecting the rights of the individuals and minorities against the majorities in said society, is it now? It’s almost as if humans simply weren’t built for that.
I don’t think you can actually find a truly honest candidates for high office. There is nobody who hasn’t made deals on the way up, it’s a given, they wouldn’t be where they were if they weren’t hand in glove with corruption. They are where the money is, and have been there for some time, before ever being seriously considered as candidates. If they were at some time honest, you can be sure they have long since been brought to fall by then.